Phone hacking: Confidential letter shows probe into News International began in 2012

Reports emerge of an active investigation into the corporate liability of News International

ABC News

With reports that police want to interview Rupert Murdoch in the wake of phone-hacking trials, the ABC's Four Corners program can reveal that British police began actively pursuing corporate charges against his UK company and its directors two years ago.

A highly confidential letter written by former deputy assistant police commissioner Sue Akers to Mr Murdoch's top London lawyer has been obtained by Four Corners confirming the investigation.

Tonight's Four Corners reveals details of the letter which was sent to Mr Murdoch's lawyers just six weeks before the News Corp board announced it would split the global media company.

The split separated the lucrative US entertainment business and its television licences from the troubled newspaper division.

In the letter dated May 18, 2012, Ms Akers told Mr Murdoch's British legal adviser Lord Grabiner QC: "I am writing to confirm that there is an active investigation into the corporate liability of News International in relation to phone hacking and illegal payments to public officials."

Until this point, Mr Murdoch's company had been fully cooperating with the British police investigation into phone-hacking and pay-offs to police by Murdoch journalists.

Its lawyers believed UK police would not pursue corporate charges against News International, Mr Murdoch's UK company, which ran the News of the World and The Sun.

But British Labour MP Chris Bryant, a victim of phone-hacking, told Four Corners: "I know prosecuting authorities in this country and the United States of America are seriously considering bringing charges against members of the board of the UK company and the American company, News Corp".

The splitting of News Corp, long demanded by shareholders, had been resisted by Mr Murdoch until 2012.

It went ahead last year and has proved enormously successful for the Murdoch family and 21st Century Fox.

"The fact that the UK matters were so imminent and potentially so threatening meant that doing the split then would quarantine the assets in 21st Century Fox from the wider implications of the UK phone-hacking and bribery charges," Australian media analyst Mark McDonnell told Four Corners.

Last week, a British jury convicted former News of the World editor Andy Coulson of conspiring to hack phones.

But Rebekah Brooks, Mr Murdoch's former UK chief executive and former editor of both the News of the World and the Sun, was acquitted on all charges relating to the phone-hacking and pay-offs to a public official.

Tonight's Four Corners episode, Rupert, Rebekah and Andy, looks back at the sensational trial of Ms Brooks and Coulson and examines the problems that still lie ahead for Mr Murdoch's media empire as a result of the hacking scandal.